Conventionally, in skin cleansing agents, alkyl sulfate, polyoxyethylene alkyl sulfate, or the like has been used as a primary cleansing base, mainly in the U.S. and Europe. However, problems of these skin cleansing agents are sliminess during rinsing and leaving a tight feeling after use (Patent Publications 1 and 2). Also, since the foam produced with these skin cleansing agents readily dripped off the skin, these skin cleansing agents are not suitable for washing large areas such as the whole body with a lather.
Although alkyl ether carboxylic acid-based surfactants are known to be gentle to the skin, they have poor foaming properties; therefore, the use of these surfactants in combination with other surfactants such as alkyl ether sulfate is being studied (Patent Publication 3). Further, cleansing compositions containing ether carboxylic acid-based surfactants having a narrow molecular weight distribution (Patent Publications 4 and 5), a cleansing composition containing an ether carboxylic acid-based surfactant having a specific distribution of moles of ethylene oxide added (Patent Publication 6), and the like have also been proposed. However, because these cleansing compositions also produced small amounts of foam, which easily dripped off the skin, it was impossible to wash the body with a rich foam. In this way, these cleansing compositions had a problem with feeling upon application.